News

MCIOC Summit Provides

Unique View of Shared Challenges

The management of information technology and service delivery in government is transforming in many ways, and sustainability of services will depend on a greater ability of governments at all levels to work together.

That was the broad theme of the messages delivered to the Municipal CIO Council Summit, the largest-ever gathering of Canadian municipal IT leaders for the purpose of sharing information and strategies about national issues.Strategists from all three levels of government joined with private-sector thought leaders to bring insights to delegates gathered at the Hamilton Sheraton Hotel on May 30-June 1.

The theme of collaboration and integration was revealed right from the opening presentation by Sharon Squire, executive director of the Service Policy and Oversight Division of the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.

“We have to renew, we have to innovate, and we have to do it in a horizontal fashion,” Squire said, speaking on behalf of Corinne Charette, the CIO of Canada. “Our current model just won’t work.

“We want to look forward as we move ahead to really integrating across jurisdictions, whether it be provinces, municipalities or with the private sector.”

Municipal CIOs have long recognized the need for national collaboration to deal with such issues, and this Summit achieved a consensus that, from now on, MISA/ASIM Canada will hold an annual event where the CIOs can help each other.

This was the second Summit. The first took place in May 2011 at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Organized by the Municipal CIO Council, a special-interest group of MISA/ASIM Canada, it attracted 27 delegates who clearly relished the mutual learning opportunity.

This year the organizing team, led again by Kathryn Bulko, manager of client relationship management in the I&T Division of the City of Toronto and incoming president of MISA/ASIM Canada, welcomed 37 delegates plus seven sponsors – Cisco Systems, Compugen Inc., Forrester, Gartner, Microsoft, Partho Technologies and Xerox.

Regarding mobile communications and the bring-your-own device phenomenon,Christian Kane, analystwith Forrester Research, said organizationsare finding that a one-size-fits-all approach will not do because users want services custom designed for their devices and situations.

“This is a work in progress for everybody.” Kim Devooght, vice-president, public sector Canada at Cisco Systems, said constant innovation and experimentation will be necessary for municipalities to manage data growth of 40 per cent a year.The ever-growing challenge of data management combined unrelenting pressure for cost savings is forcing many municipalities and other publicsector organizations to consider cloud solutions, whether they want to or not. That in turn is having a big influence on how the future role of the CIO is being viewed. One of the most senior CIOs at the Summit predicted a drastic change coming in the nature of the job.

Marty Gallas, corporate chief of infrastructure technology services for Ontario, leads the largest IT organization in Ontario, with 4,728 staff. He said that shared services and creation of a hybrid provincial cloud are central strategies the Province is pursuing to drive down costs, with attendant impact on how CIOs will function in ministries.

“We think that our CIOs will turn more into brokers and relationship managers,” Gallas said. “With the lineof-business ministries that they support, they will broker services, whether from our common infrastructure group or from solutions in the marketplace.” and the bring-your-own device phenomenon,Christian Kane, an analyst with Forrester Research, said organizations are finding that a one-size-fits-all approach will not do because users want services custom designed for their devices and situations.

“Mobility means supporting an entire ecosystem” including devices, management solutions and, inevitably, an enterprise-wide application store, Kane said “This is a work in progress for everybody.”

Kim Devooght, vice-president, public sector Canada at Cisco Systems, said constant innovation and experimentation will be necessary for municipalities to manage data growth of 40 per cent a year.

The ever-growing challenge of data management combined with unrelenting pressure for cost savings is forcing many municipalities and other public sector organizations to consider cloud solutions, whether they want to or not. That in turn is having a big influence on how the future role of the CIO is being viewed.

One of the most senior CIOs at the Summit predicted a drastic change coming in the nature of the job.

Marty Gallas, corporate chief of infrastructure technology services for Ontario, leads the largest IT organization in Ontario, with 4,728 staff. He said that shared services and creation of a hybrid provincial cloud are central strategies the Province is pursuing to drive down costs, with attendant impact on how CIOs will function in ministries.

“We think that our CIOs will turn more into brokers and relationship managers,” Gallas said. “With the lineof- business ministries that they support, they will broker services, whether from our common infrastructure group or from solutions in the marketplace.”

Other thought-provoking presentations came from:

Rob Meikle, CIO of the City of Brampton, on the risks and rewards of embracing social media;

Claudio DeRose, director of interjurisdictional services for Service Ontario, and Vinod Vyas and Louis Shallal of Partho Technology on cloud and portal technologies;

Harry Zarek, president of Compugen Inc., and Ryan Gustavson, director of Xerox Global Services, on the benefits of shared and managed services.

Throughout the Summit there were many instances where people called for greater collaboration to reduce burdens on technology management, especially for repeatable processes.

“Let’s stop this duplicative investment in portals,” DeRose urged in his speech. “I think there is a valuable proposition in working together.”

Andrea Di Maio, a vice president of Gartner Research based in Italy, predicted in his presentation about key trends for the future that the move toward shared services in government will be more powerful than the cloud.

“How do we get to the next level of efficiency?” De Maio asked. “We start by overcoming boundaries – between departments and tiers of government, between people who make policies and those who manage projects, and between us and our citizens.”

Neither Alan Mitchell nor Skip Lumley has ever led a municipal IT department.Neither one has held executive office in a MISA/ASIM Canada member organization.Yet the national association has awarded them its highest honour, for an achievement that transcends departments and organizations.

Mitchell and Lumley received the Peter Bennett Award on May 31 during the Municipal CIO Council Summit in Hamilton for their visionary leadership of the team that completed the Municipal Reference Model Version 2 Project.

Mitchell and Lumley provided the intellectual and educational foundation for the project, which has permanently transformed the ability of municipalities across Canada to improve service delivery and operational efficiency while collaborating with other jurisdictions to align services and measure service performance.

Before the MRMv2 Project, it was not possible except in isolated instances for municipalities to collaborate with each other or with other organizations to facilitate inter-jurisdictionaldeliveryofgovernmentservices.This was because every municipality defined its services in a different way and there was no common taxonomy or structural mapping to enable municipalities to speak with each other in collaborative terms.

Now there is.For many municipalities across the country, the MRM has revolutionized the way that they think about and describe the services they provide.Fundamental terms such as “service” and “outcome” have been given precise definitions in the MRM, to an extent that is unequalled in any other government business architecture in the world.Mitchell and Lumley are the chief architects of this achievement, and their vision was fashioned into a concrete, modern, accessible standard by the many contributors to the MRMv2 Project.

The MRM enables service structures to be described in a standard way so that municipalities can compare their services and efficiency with each other using national benchmarks.They can also work to eliminate service-delivery redundancies with other government jurisdictions.

During the MRMv2 Project from 2007 through 2011, Mitchell and Lumley were employed as consultants in Toronto.Nevertheless, they put in thousands of hours beyond what was included under any contract – and continue to do so, even though Lumley is now retired and Mitchell has returned as a municipal employee to the City of Toronto.

The MRMv2 Steering Committee was led by Roy Wiseman, then CIO of the Region of Peel.The project manager during most of the four years was Geovanni Mosquera, then a project manager and now director of information, systems and technology services for Peel.

Other contributors worked long hours, unrecognized, to participate in pilot projects, webinars, seminars and uncounted meetings and conference calls.Mosquera estimates that more than 8,000 volunteer hours were contributed to the MRMv2 project!

Participants, in addition to those already named, included:

Steering Committee

Louis Shallal – York Region

Ralph Blauel – Halton Region

Bob Diakow – Niagara Region

Nassir Kenea – Town of Markham

Dave Wallace – City of Toronto

Adele McDonald – City of Edmonton

Chris Moore – City of Edmonton

Maurice Gallant – City of Fredericton

Stephen Wong – City of Toronto

Garry Bezruki - City of Waterloo

John Johnston – City of Toronto

Project Team

Phillip Scott – City of Toronto

Nancy Isozaki – City of Toronto

Marco Narduzzo – City of Toronto

Mike Proudlock – Peel Region

Henry DeJager-- Halton Region

Chris Lui – Halton Region

Partners

Steven Brickell -- IBM

Jim Amsdem – IBM

Valerio Rosatti – IBM

David Ing – IBM

The legacy of the MRMv2 team is a pan-Canadian reference model that will enable all governments to describe and map their services in a coordinated way – a turning point in the history of Canada’s public sector.

Alan Mitchell, left, and Skip Lumley receive the Peter Bennett Award on May 31 from Kathryn Bulko of the City of Toronto, president of MISA/ASIM Canada.

National Forum in May To Be Collaborative MilestoneNational Forum To Be Collaborative MilestoneMunicipal information-technology leaders across Canada are invited to attend a national summit in May, an event that promises to be of historic importance ... Posted 2 hours ago by Lawrence Moule

A new president and slate of directors have been chosen to lead MISA/ASIM Canada during the next two years.

The 2012-13 president is Kathryn Bulko, manager of client relationships in the Business Enablement and Client Services branch of the I&T Division of the City of Toronto.

The 10 directors of MISA/ASIM Canada voted unanimously to appoint Bulko as president during the Annual General Meeting held May 30 in Hamilton, Ontario.She succeeds Maurice Gallant, CIO of the City of Fredericton, who will serve as past president for the new two-year term.

Bulko, previously vice president, is also a past president of MISA Ontario.She is chair of the Procurement Working Group of the Public Sector CIO Council and was the primary organizer of the second annual Municipal CIO Council Summit, which concluded in Hamilton on June 1.

Succeeding Bulko as vice-president is Rob Schneider, manager of information technology services for Strathcona County, Alberta, and recently appointed to the MISA/ASIM Canada Board of Directors by MISA Prairies.

The board is composed of two representatives from each of the five regional members of MISA/ASIM Canada: MISA Atlantic, MISA BC, MISA Ontario, MISA Prairies and Réseau de l’Informatique Municipale du Québec (RIMQ).

Garry Bezruki, director of information management and technology services for the City of Waterloo, Ontario, continues as treasurer, and David Hennigan, information systems manager of the Capital Region District, BC, returns as secretary.

The boardsof directors of three
MISA chapters have agreed in principle to investigate establishing a
collaboration platform for the chapters’ Web sites.

MISABC, MISA Prairies and MISA Ontario are working together
to develop a request for proposal for a new platform that could provide access,
transactional capabilities and support for each of their sites. Each site
would be distinctive but they would have a common look and feel.

Executive members of the three chapters will be meeting
to discuss the initiative during the MISA Ontario Annual Conference in Hamilton
at the end of May.

MISA/ASIM Canada’s Web site could also be included in the
terms of the RFP, which the chapters hope to issue this summer. Implementation is
tentatively planned for the end of 2012.

Meanwhile a new online forum has been established to
facilitate easier collaboration among IT professionals and managers from
municipalities within the five member organizations of MISA/ASIM Canada.

The forum on LinkedIn was announced at the MISA Prairies Spring
Conference in Calgary by chapter president Corey Halford, who also described
the collaborative Web-site initiative.

Called the MISA Forum, the new collaborative
site can be joined by anyone with a LinkedIn account and is being used by
numerous people from various chapters to inquire among each other about
policies, methods, systems and applications.

Gaston Huot, right, Director of Information Technology for the Quebec municipalities of Boucherville, Brossard, Saint-Bruno and Saint-Lambert, receives the Peter Bennett Award at Lac Carling on May 16 from Maurice Gallant, CIO of the City of Fredericton and President of MISA/ASIM Canada.

Gaston Huot, president of Réseau de l’Informatique Municipale du Québec (RIMQ), has been honoured with the 2011 Peter Bennett Award.

Credited as being instrumental in ensuring the participation of Quebec municipalities in MISA/ASIM Canada through RIMQ, Huot was presented with Canada’s highest municipal IT award May 16 during the Lac Carling Congress in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.

Huot serves as the director of information technology for four municipalities on the south side of the St. Lawrence River opposite Montreal: Boucherville, Brossard, Saint-Bruno and Saint-Lambert. He has been a leader in establishing a unique partnership among those municipalities since voters decided several years ago to reconstitute their cities, which had formerly been amalgamated.

Huot has led many projects that have transformed service delivery for his municipalities and has been an innovative influence in Quebec’s municipal IT association.President of RIMQ since September 2010, he has been a member of the RIMQ board of directors for 15 years, including two terms as vice president

Huot was a founding member of MISA/ASIM Canada in 2006 and is a consistent advocate for, and supporter of, MISA/ASIM Canada within Quebec.He has helped to develop MISA/ASIM Canada’s strategic plan and is the francophone editor for Municipal Interface.

“In all cases, Gaston has made a substantial contribution in ensuring that the interests of Quebec municipalities and the francophone community are represented in MISA/ASIM Canada and other forums, while at the same time embracing a larger vision of how municipalities from all parts of Canada can work together,” Maurice Gallant, president of MISA/ASIM Canada, said in making the award presentation.

Highlights from Huot’s 35-year career in public-sector IT include:

Prix Quebecois Hommages 2001 for Brossard Interactif, described as the first client-service Web portal in Quebec;

GTEC Distinction award for Brossard Interactif;

GTEC Distinction award for Clic Brossard, a virtual business centre, developed in partnership with the Brossard business community;

Negotiated an agreement with a private-sector provider to implement a life events portal for Brossard, the first such project in Quebec;

Developed and established a program to implement wi-fi access in 27 public buildings and 20 public spaces within his municipalities;

Developed an architecture for a fibre-optic network connecting locations throughout Longueuil.

“In all of these activities, Gaston has displayed outstanding leadership and a spirit of partnership, respect and collaboration that is found in only a few,” Gallant said.“These characteristics are the very essence of the Peter Bennett Award, and there isn’t a more deserving recipient than Gaston Huot.”

The Peter Bennett Awardis presented to an individual making an outstanding contribution to the Canadian municipal IT community and to the MISA/ASIM Canada mission and objectives, while exemplifying Peter Bennett’s spirit of demonstrated leadership combined with humour and humanity. Bennett, a municipal IT pioneer from Winnipeg, died in 2005.

The question about the role of IT within and organization and by extension
the role of its leader is something as IT Executives we struggle with
constantly … As a member of the ‘c-suite’ the CIO is a relative new function
and is quite often not a full member ofa company’s senior management team.With technology playing a much larger role in society and in the
operations of organizations combined with an increased reliance from a business
continuity perspective not to mention how technology can be used as a
competitive advantage there is a shift happening with the role both in the
public and private sector …

Below
are some questions, comments and challenges that we grapple with on a daily
basis that are being posed to spark a discussion amongst us as municipal IT
Leaders at the upcoming MISA/ASIM Canada MCIOC Summit about the role of an IT
Leader in our municipalities …. See you there next monthJAdam Hughes

Consumerization/’iTune’ification

Very savvy users

Government
2.0

Citizen expectations of service are high

Stewardship
vs ownership

Honest broker

What
will the future state of IT look like?

Utility vs enabler

Reliance
on technology for business continuity …

IT is everywhere / sphere of responsibility

Do
more with less

Expectations of senior management are high

Flexible
solutions necessary

Creativity required for success

Value
of Information

Key corporate asset

Seamless
Socialization

Internal melding with external

Open Data

Balance of openness
& transparency with security, copyright or patents.